The recipe said you can substitute raw tahini, but a 2-cup jar at Capers was $16! So I ground my own seeds in a coffee grinder. This was fairly messy and they weren't all entirely ground, but it was good enough for my first halvah try.

2 Tbsp is maybe a bit too much honey. It could probably use more carob powder. And I added a bit of water, which was in the end maybe a bad idea, as it doesn't fully harden. Next time I'll just try grinding the seeds longer to form more of a paste.

I really wasn't that hungry at this point, but I'd been planning on making stuffed peppers for dinner so I went ahead and did it, using this recipe. It was o-k. The peppers are stuffed with cashews, carrots, celery, raisins, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic. Oops, I just noticed there's salt in the recipe -- I forgot to add the salt. I ground all of this into a pâté in my blender. At which point I finally understood the difference between a blender and a food processor. My blender wanted to turn the filling into a drink. It was a long and arduous process but I managed to come out with some decent pâté.

I didn't love this meal, probably because of the raisins -- I'm not a huge raisin fan. Next time maybe I will substitute dried cranberries. ALSO. I only used two cloves of garlic and it is SO GARLICKY. Raw garlic, it turns out, is much more potent than cooked.